Chloe Harcombe

Chloe Harcombe tells health stories through the lives of patients, families and communities, using detailed case studies to show how illness, treatment and support systems intersect. She works as a multimedia journalist at BBC News and BBC Radio Bristol, focusing on health-led human-interest pieces and closely reported local coverage.

Serious illness told through individual cases

Across her health reporting, she returns to complex or life-threatening conditions and explains them through a single patient’s experience. In her coverage of a boy whose life is saved after angioplasty to reverse heart failure, she concentrates on the sequence of care decisions, the technical intervention, and the impact on his immediate family rather than the procedure in isolation. A piece on a teenager with a severe blistering skin disease uses clear descriptions of symptoms and mobility limits to convey how the condition reshapes daily life, while still anchoring the story in the girl’s own words and outlook. When she reports on incidents such as a man falling ill from an unknown substance, she combines clinical detail, eyewitness accounts and official updates, giving readers enough verified information to understand risk without speculation.

This emphasis on specific patients gives her work a consistent structure: she introduces a person at a critical moment, sets out the medical background in plain language, and then tracks how clinicians, carers and services respond. The result is coverage that reads as much about living with illness as about the condition itself, with close attention to how delays, access to specialists or new procedures can alter outcomes.

Women’s health and long-term conditions

Harcombe devotes repeated attention to women’s health, especially conditions that are often minimised or misunderstood. In her reporting on a woman whose “whole world went to bits” after a diagnosis of ME, she shows how a chronic fatigue condition affects work, relationships and mental health, and she frames creative hobbies and new interests as forms of coping rather than side details. A story on a young woman living with stage three endometriosis stresses that the condition is “more than painful periods”, using the subject’s support group and treatment journey to challenge dismissive stereotypes around menstrual pain.

These pieces share a clear pattern: she lets women describe pain, fatigue and dismissal in their own terms, then sets those accounts against clinical explanations and the availability of services. She highlights support groups, advocacy organisations and peer networks, signalling that healthcare for chronic conditions extends beyond clinical appointments. Her language remains straightforward, but the selection of quotes and context underlines gaps in diagnosis, the emotional cost of being disbelieved, and the practical barriers to getting help.

Young people, digital risks and mental health

Her work with video and online formats extends the health beat into digital and social contexts, particularly for younger audiences. In coverage of teenagers exposed to harmful content on social media, she combines interviews with affected young people and families with platform responses and expert comment on online safety. The focus stays on the psychological strain and behavioural impact of repeated exposure to self-harm or extreme content, rather than on the technology alone.

This strand of her reporting treats online environments as part of the wider public health picture for young people. She links algorithms, moderation and reporting tools to concrete outcomes such as anxiety, body image and self-harm risk, and presents these issues in accessible language that does not sensationalise individual cases. The format often blends short, clear narration with direct testimony, reflecting her multimedia brief.

Community stories around health, trauma and meaning

Beyond clinical settings, Harcombe covers community initiatives and cultural projects that touch on health, trauma and how people make sense of difficult experiences. In a feature on an author who gathers more than 100 people’s views on the meaning of life, she treats the book as a way into wider questions of grief, resilience and purpose, allowing contributors’ reflections to sit alongside the author’s project. Her reporting on campaigns and commemorative events linked to violence or loss treats them as part of recovery and public recognition, not only as isolated news events.

This community focus gives her portfolio a wider emotional range than straight health service reporting. Charity events, local campaigns and creative projects often appear in her work where they intersect with illness, bereavement or long-term recovery. She pays attention to how organisers frame their efforts, what participants hope to change, and how these activities connect back to earlier trauma or ongoing health needs. Across formats, her tone stays measured and unsentimental, letting the subjects set the emotional register while she provides clear, factual scaffolding.

Taken together, Harcombe’s work sits at the point where medical issues, personal narratives and community responses meet. She prioritises patient and participant voices, explains conditions and risks in simple terms, and uses the tools of multimedia reporting to show how health is lived, not just treated.